Black and White World
Franz Kline liked beer at the Cedar Bar and English tea in the studio. He could play the dandy or the clown, talk about rugs, vintage cars, Gericault’s horses and baseball. He loved jazz and Wagner. He was a confirmed New Yorker, but had roots in the gritty coal country…
Nothing Special
The Specialist has fewer explosions than most of this year’s other “blowed up real good” movies. This is not a plus, since The Specialist also has less plot and dialogue than any of this year’s other “blowed up real good” movies. The film begins with the specialist of the title,…
Hoop Dreams of Glory
Hoop Dreams arrives just in time to add a level of irony to the opening of the NBA season. We grateful Houstonians (myself certainly included) will welcome our champs back with open arms and soft, yielding minds because, thanks to them and the basketball gods, we finally had our day…
Love Madness
It’s gratifying to see that the late Tony Richardson’s final film, Blue Sky, is so complex, adult and moving. To see, in other words, that Richardson remained true to his vision of what film should do, and how. Despite the fact that Richardson was already sick nearly unto death during…
No Choice
Around midnight on June 4, Tanya Sanders and her best friend were out two-stepping at a country-and-western nightclub in Baytown. Their night on the town came to an abrupt end, however, when Sanders began suffering severe stomach cramps and excessive uterine bleeding and was taken to the emergency room at…
Lil’ Bob, Gay Baiter
County judge candidate Vince Ryan has been publicly quoting a paragraph from Tim Fleck’s article in the September 29th issue of the Press on Ryan’s contest with Robert Eckels. To wit: “While Ryan runs as an outsider and reformer, Eckels has chosen a more convoluted role: campaigning as a team…
Tea at the di Portanovas’
Wreathes there a Houstonian with soul so dead, he has not longed to peek inside the River Oaks Boulevard mansion of the Baron and Baroness Enrique di Portanova? Folks have been gossiping about the place ever since its 1970s redo, while the disenfranchised Italian baron waged his protracted legal battle…
Letters
Rice Nice to Press I was surprised to see in your “Letters to the Editor” section the week of Oct. 6-12 a letter from a gentleman stating that he could no longer find the Houston Press in his Rice Food Market. Rice Food Markets and Rice Epicurean Markets have always…
Press Picks
thursday october 20 Greater Houston Coin Club The coin club meets every third Thursday but this, this is a special meeting. Games, door prizes and auctions will be added to the usual numismatic frolic in the hope of luring new members — particularly youthful new members — to the fold…
Simply Fondon’t
There was a 40-minute wait for a table at Simply Fondue the Saturday before last; I’m still trying to figure out why. It wasn’t because the food at this preciously named Briargrove restaurant was good enough to fuel a revival of the early ’60s fondue craze. Quite the contrary: the…
Ari’s: The Sequel
Reinvention, that rampant cliche of American pop culture, has lately spread like a virus among Houston restaurants. From highbrow Anthony’s to middlebrow Birraporetti’s to humble Swan Den (now Neo China), veteran eating establishments are shedding their tired old wardrobes and menu repertoires to emerge as sleeker, trendier (and occasionally unrecognizable)…
Rotation
de Schmog Kiddie Wonderland Disclexington Productions The opening cut of Kiddie Wonderland embodies every formidable strength in the de Schmog arsenal. There’s that quirky, backward-looking 1950s sensibility, showing itself in a gently retro chord progression that would be right at home on the Grease soundtrack. There’s Kilian Sweeney’s chirpy vocal,…
Dismounting dead horse
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? I generally don’t suffer many confidence problems, but if the present trend continues, I’m afraid I might develop a complex. See, for the past two years, the Minneapolis-based national music magazine Request has asked me to contribute to its late-summer city-by-city guide to promising independent…
Little Big Crony
It’s an unusually warm day for what passes for autumn in Houston, and Billy Burge is playing hurt. The chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority has just returned from yet another trip out of town — Boston, this time — and is back to work at his day job as…
Bad Motocaster
Motocaster is rock. Not grunge-rock, not alterna-rock, not surf-rock, math-rock, nor any of the other hyphenates occupying an increasing percentage of the bins at your local record shop. Just plain rock, in the way that everyone rocked once — in the stone(d) age — when everything good and loud and…
A Promise Fulfilled
Songwriter Vince Bell is sitting on the other end of the line, which is somewhere in the Fredericksburg home he shares with his wife, and his straining voice — imagine a whisper threading its way through gravel — is asking the mostly rhetorical question: “What medical therapy exists in this…
Marie or Maria?
“The hills are alive with the sound of … paper roses?” That’s right, Marie Osmond — who made her show business debut at age three on The Andy Williams Show; recorded her first country single, “Paper Roses,” at 13; and a year later co-hosted with her brother, Donny, the mid-1970s’…